What Will Be the New Kale?

Our 2011 crop of spigarello. Since 2011, we’ve been saying that Spigarello is the new kale. Thanks to a tip from the folks at Winnetka Farms, we may need to wait for BroccoLeaf™ to have its fifteen minutes of fame as the new kale. The Salinas, California based Foxy Organic is, quite sensibly, marketing broccoli leaves. Broccoli leaves are indeed edible and tasty. Foxy has the recursive media to prove it, a Facebook photo of someone Instagramming...

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Bar Codes on Veggies

...rating with other farming and agricultural associations are adding QR code labels right at the point of origin. In the supermarket, consumers use camera equipped cell phones to scan the QR code on the label. The code links to a mobile website detailing origin, soil composition, organic fertilizer content percentage (as opposed to chemical), use of pesticides and herbicides and even the name of the farm it was grown on. Consumers can also access th...

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Reader Feedback About Facebook

...wess that I don’t possess but it’s the kind of solution that we in the DIY homestead world need to consider. We’re about making and doing things, right? One of those tasks might be creating the open source and decentralized internet we were promised in the 1990s before large, thuggish robber barons like Facebook arrived on the scene. I’ve blogged in the past about mesh networks set up with old routers and, apparently, this is what’s being done in...

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Saturday Tweets: Ginger Bug, Vegetable Soup Base and a Zero Cost House

...MQobBIF — Emily Han (@misschiffonade) January 30, 2016 Next in Garden Flag-Making: Rit Dyes and Stencils | Garden Rant https://t.co/HeYi0LpkyQ — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 30, 2016 Homemade Vegetable Soup Base https://t.co/rNFjnGp4kp — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 30, 2016 DIY Chimney Sweeping https://t.co/LcF3J3PJk6 via @wordpressdotcom — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 30, 2016 DIY termite treatment-anyone know if this works? https...

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Ways to Critter Proof Your Vegetable Beds: A Competition

...nto the vacuum of space. What we’re looking for is a means to mammal proof vegetables beds that is: Convenient Effective Attractive Wildlife friendly Easily disassembled in the off season Note that we’re going to be particularly stringent in judging the aesthetics of the solution. Mrs. Homegrown has an M.F.A., and is a blistering in-house art and design critic around our little homestead. Participants can leave a comment on this post linking to an...

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